This remembrance is illuminating in several ways. First of all, the author seems oblivious to the instruments of political manipulation employed against him in the visual consumption of western capitalism. He obviously is the sex vote that was discussed earlier, the US constitutes for him the freedom to masturbate to Farrah posters. Second, the author tacitly acknowledges that democratization can just as easily be spread through network systems of consumerist images than through elective military violence and pre-emptive strikes. The Internet, which began as a DARPA project anyway, constitutes a deterritorialization. Farrah was not an ambassador but the latest and best extension of the East India Company.

Good points, ren. Yes, it's illuminating, and also hilarious. I'm not big fans of the work of either one of them (I bought a copy of Thriller, but never had the Fawcett poster; did see Charlie's Angels a few times, though), but surely Jackson made a much more substantial and significant impact in song and dance and the mini-theatre that is/was the music video than Fawcett ever made to anything. The author is holding up Fawcett as some kind of "semi-wholesome" "girl next door." A more proper ambassador for America than Jackson.

Problem with all that is that it doesn't really seem to square with the reality that Fawcett was the girl next door who posed for Pl**boy (google it if you wish) multiple times, as well as a nude Pboy video. Certainly pretty tame compared to other possibilities, but still, is this something that the conservative right - with its regularly touted moral superiority - can embrace and not look stupid? Was she much of an actress really, or a singer, or a dancer? No. Mostly she was sorta middle-of-the-road pretty and had a nice smile and posed for that poster (which really only proves my point in the "sex vote" thread, wherein I noted that even one-piece suits won't stop the lustful eyes and imagination of boys (or men)) - she went from the one-piece suit (which was famous at least in part because of what one could see THROUGH the suit) to fully naked in a magazine that the right got a lot of mileage from decrying as a signpost for the downfall of civilization. It was a "gateway" swimsuit! Jackson made some great pop music and a few groundbreaking music videos. Sure, he was weird, and known for some questionable stuff (although, to my knowledge, was fully exonerated of all the stuff that was indisputably wrong), but as for his work, he's WIDELY regarded as a superior talent. Fawcett was a pretty face on Charlie's Angels and was on a poster that is widely known as a symbol of boyhood onanism. Varadarajan's tribute to her significance is more than a bit of a stretch. But he's a business professor writing for Forbes and the poster was a big seller, so I guess that explains it, to some extent.

whoops - meant to write "I'm not a big fan of either one of them..."

How fortunate for the benighted people of India that they have people like ren and Craig Scanlon to tell them how much they're exploited by American capitalism.

Yersinia Pestis? Kind of a creepy moniker to go by, isn't it? I'm guessing that the NSA has been monitoring your activities pretty closely for at least a few years now. Not sure if that's a bad thing, either...